Black meme : a history of the images that make us

Black meme A history of the images that make us

Legacy Russell

Book - 2024

"Explores the construct, culture, and material of the "meme" as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to present day"--

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this

2nd Floor New Shelf Show me where

302.226/Russell
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor New Shelf 302.226/Russell (NEW SHELF) Checked In
Subjects
Black people > Race identity > Philosophy.
Visual sociology.
Black people in mass media.
Black people and mass media > United States > History.
Published
London ; New York : Verso 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Legacy Russell (author)
Physical Description
x,182 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781839762802
  • Overture : Black planets/Black memes/Black acts
  • Strange fruit, gone viral : the souls of moving image
  • Eating the other : Emmett Till's memory, myth, and Black magic
  • Selma on my mind : protest, media, and viral witness
  • Sporting the Black complaint : John Carlos and Tommie Smith, silent Blackness, and memetic nationhood
  • Viral zombiism : Michael Jackson and "Thriller"
  • Paris is burning : viral ballrooms and memetic royalties
  • Reality, televised : on the Rodney King generation
  • Refusing symbolism : Anita Hill and Magic Johnson
  • "The dancing baby" : birth of a [GIF] nation
  • The shadow, the substance : Renty and Delia as viral daguerreotypes
  • Meme afterlives : Lavish Reynolds in broadcast (and, anyway, arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor)
  • Outro in remix : lyric for the Black meme.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Black culture has played a pivotal role in shaping notions of digital virality, according to this innovative analysis from curator Russell (Glitch Feminism). Tracing "Blackness itself as a viral agent" transmitted through "mediation, copying, and carrying," from 19th-century lynching postcards to today, Russell examines how Black imagery has been used to perpetuate racism and racist violence. (Even seemingly innocent internet artifacts are objects of appropriation, according to Russell, who describes a widely shared dancing baby GIF from the 1990s as an "imaginary projection of a Black child who dances for the viewer on loop, in endless labor.") In addition to constructing a persuasive case that digital culture steals from Black culture even as it looks down on Black people, Russell takes care to highlight positive media depictions of Blackness, such as Michael Jackson's 1983 Thriller music video, in which "zombies, in a constant state of transmission, transformation, transmutation, and becoming, are the embodiment of the Black meme--reanimated, empowered, collectivized." This is sure to stir debate. Photos. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Similar Items